What is God's role with Born Disabled?

oneandonly

Salaam everyone.

I always had this question in my mind and have never been able to get any reasonable answer so far.

What is God's role with people who are born disabled? particularly those who are born severely disabled. If god is never unjust to his creations and he is the most merciful, why these people has to suffer for something they didn't have anything to do?

Any Logical input or Scripture understanding (any of God's scripture) would be great..

Peace

unknownuser

The answer is simple.

2461 There is no blame upon the blind, nor is there any blame upon the crippled, nor is there any blame upon the ill, nor is there any blame upon yourselves, if you eat at your homes, or the homes of your fathers, or the homes of your mothers, or the homes of your brothers, or the homes of your sisters, or the homes of your uncles, or the homes of your aunts, or the homes of your mothers brothers, or the homes of your mothers sisters, or that which you possess their keys, or that of your friends. You commit nothing wrong by eating together or as individuals. When you enter any home, you shall greet each other a greeting from God that is blessed and good. God thus explains the revelations for you that you may comprehend.

The verse is clearly stated if we must not discriminated disability people.

huruf

In that case, every species and every person could protest for being handled unfairly, because every species and eery person has what others do not have. A crippled person has an opportunity to cultivate things that other people will disregard. Crippled persons do live and love life just like non crippled persons do. Bugs cannot develop philosophy or have washing machines, but they have their own destinies, and they themselves are their own measure, just like for the crippled he or she is his or her own measure.

God creates everything, and everything means EVERYTHING, and everything will balance out, because as the Qur'an says God does everything with a balance with the just balance. Nobody who das good will be wronged, be crippled or be non crippled (Is there anybody who is perfect in his constituion or destiny?).

God ultimately will make everything good, EVERYTHING. We are but a glimpse in existence and do not know the whole story. God does know and God is the author of the whole story. He can give many happy endings to everybody and everything. Just play you part as He wrote it. It is always a perfect part.

Salaam

oneandonly

Salam Earthdom, Salam Huruf,

First of all thank you for your reply.

While I agree with most of the points you have mentioned, I still think it does not answer my concern. I agree with you that we should not descriminate the disables as they are creations of God and I certainly do not question God's creation. However, I am trying to understand why these people have to suffer for nothing. for example, if a lady is born with a leg missing, Is she going to be treated the same way as normal person. Answer is NO. Will she be able to get a husband easily as others? answer is NO. Will she be able to live normal life? answer is NO. they have to live with this every second in their life and it certainly is painful. If a person gets disabled later in life, we can assume he/she may have done somthing terrible wrong which unpleases god but for a person who is born disable we cannot say so. So why? Why god gives these people difficult life and others normal? I understand the differences like rich and poor but I think being severely disabled is way too far from that comparison. Poor can get rich later in life but what about disabled whose leg is missing. Is his leg going to grow? NO. Can we say that if a person is born disabled his sins are less punishable then normal person?.. does not make sense.

While I agree with Huruf's last paragraph that this is a part of God's unthinkable, unimaginable, perfect plan, I am trying to seek knowledge and understand the logic behind the situation we come in contact very often.

Apologies if you found my reply offensive or aggresive but I just recently came in contact with such kind of person and I have been questioning myself.

May God guide us all

Timur

Peace oneandonly,

I think you should consider that the hereafter is by far more important than the worldly life. The hereafter is infinity, but the worldy life is nothing in comparison.

Zulf

However, I am trying to understand why these people have to suffer for nothing.

Well, who says they are all suffering, and who says those who suffer suffer for nothing? That's your assumption.
This is basically a matter of perspective, and also insight regarding purpose and meaning I must say.
Like Timur indirectly said, this world is nothing, and is soon gone for each of us. One life is not very long. Things rise and perish, moments fleet.

Anyhow, if we say that someone suffer for nothing, it either means two things (or both), and those things are i) God is not fair, ii) the sufferer fails to learn something valuable from the suffering and that situation.
It's up to each of us to decide whether we believe God is unfair or not. If God is NOT unfair, then no suffereing is for nothing, except of course in those cases that we refuse to learn something from it, which I think is one of the main characteristics of the human kind. But in Gods infinite grace ad mercy, there is always an opportunity to grow in each and every situation... it's not easy, but it is possible.

We often like to decide what the purpose of life is, and what is good and what is bad, and out of those assumptions, coz that's what they are, we form idea about whether things are fair, unfair, for nothing etc. It's all about perspective. As per my current undertanding, be it meager, limited or immature, but I believe that growth (potential) comes from situations that we'd tend to label as unpleasent or undesirable. In this sense, there is mercy from God in every moment of life, especially the difficult ones... and such an enormous mercy we cannot even begin to grasp.

The big question is, what's life about anyway? Is it supposed to be just easy, smooth and soft, or is the very purpose for us in this life to go through some shit that we may learn from it... learn to move away from faulty understanding of life and God... move closer to God and Truth. Like it is written somewhere in the quran, if I'm not mistaken,.. that something we like may be bad for us, and something we dislike may be good for us.

Peace and best wishes

Tigress

i understand what you mean...like when people say God created all of his creations perfect. but clearly someone with cerebral palsy or autism or downs doesnt seem to be perfect from our perspective. nor does this seem to be fair from our perspective. my only thought is that we can't see the whole picture?

Salaam everyone.

I always had this question in my mind and have never been able to get any reasonable answer so far.

What is God's role with people who are born disabled? particularly those who are born severely disabled. If god is never unjust to his creations and he is the most merciful, why these people has to suffer for something they didn't have anything to do?

Any Logical input or Scripture understanding (any of God's scripture) would be great..

Peace

huruf

i understand what you mean...like when people say God created all of his creations perfect. but clearly someone with cerebral palsy or autism or downs doesnt seem to be perfect from our perspective. nor does this seem to be fair from our perspective. my only thought is that we can't see the whole picture?

I think your problem is that you yourself suffer because you think that those who have defects are bound to be unhappy. But happiness is not bound to normality or abnormality. There are normal people extremely unhappy. In fact you may be suffering for abonormality more than the one who has a defect because you do not accept it nor think that they can be happy being as they are. But the fact is that you can be normal, or apparently normal and you may have conditions in your life that make you extremely unhappy, like a drunkard father or no father or mother or a bd love experience to the extreme that youmay even think of suicide.

I think you are mixing different things and on top of it you are tying physical difects to guilt. You ask why God should do that as if guilt would be the only reason for it, as if it should have to be a punishment. Of course it is not a punishment, may be not only it is not a punishment but a distinction, an honour. God trusts a person with a difficult destiny... that is a trust of God. Like countries, populations who undergo horrible trials and are victimised to the utmost... Would you say that is a punishment? May be or may be not. A bad love affair is a punishment? No. We all are tried, with difficulties or with ease. God creates as He wants, and being created the way we are is an honour. God wanted us particularly like that, they way He made us. There is no defect no abnormality from the point of view of creation. There is each person, each creature, each thing and the destiny God has appointed to it. There is no injustice. There is no cake that when it finishes there may be people left without their share. There will be plenty for everything and everybody. Each of us, if faithful to our destiny, will get our crown, the one fit for us. lame or defective people merit our compassion, but the non defective also merit compassion, because nobody is free from suffering and stumbling.

God does nothing wrong, because He is the law, he is responsible before Himself, and He responds fully of his promises, nobody who is faithful will EVER REGRET ANYTHING, nor abnormal people will regret anything. The "injustice" done to them, will be the tools of their glory. That is their way back to God.

On the other hand, we all are abnormal or unadapted in a way or another, though it may not be visible or as extreme as others. So "injustice" is done to all, because in the dunya there is nothing perfect, nothing devoid of suffering. Being a parent is a source of suffering, not being a parent is also a source of suffering... We all are tried

Salaam

oneandonly

Salaam,

What I have noticed is while it is easy to say we should not discriminate for being disabled it is also the true fact that it is extremely difficult to bring this into practice.

My next question goes to Huruf and Zulf. If you have choice of getting married to one of 5 person. 4 of them are normal with looks, education, etc.. and 1 of them is Without a leg. Will you really marry a lady without leg? Forget getting married. will you even consider her potential to get married? (I guess most of the people will think about how we will have child, how it will effect our children lives etc..) Think about it a while and imagine yourself getting married to a severely disabled girl before typing to answer this please. Even if you will say yes, I will say you will remain one of those kind person in million and trust me there are much more disabled person in this world then people like you guys.

@Zulf, may be the way I said suffering is wrong, but my question is why they have to face different circumstances which seems to be logically much more difficult while living in the same world as others? Are those people really happy about how they are or have they compromised themselves as they have no other choice? If so, why are they forced to compromise?

My request again, please do not get offended with any of my lines, it is not intentional. Myself I am not disabled but recently I have come into contact with a person where I can see this closer. I used to think the same way you guys are explaining but have completely seen a different view since then..

Peace

357

Salaam everyone.

I always had this question in my mind and have never been able to get any reasonable answer so far.

What is God's role with people who are born disabled? particularly those who are born severely disabled. If god is never unjust to his creations and he is the most merciful, why these people has to suffer for something they didn't have anything to do?

Any Logical input or Scripture understanding (any of God's scripture) would be great..

Peace

You as a person can go and break a child leg, God creats it and you break it - nothing stopping you - then someone askes what is Gods role in the breaking of the leg of the poor child. God has made many living things and they all work for their advantage in doing so they may be working against another living thing- so can we blame God allmighty for this???
come on rotfl sorry i just wanted to have a laugh, but i hope you understand what i meant.

peace

huruf

Love is blind. I know people who are married to defective people. So what? And what makes you think that "normal" people are not unhappy unadapted and nobody will listen to them because to people like you they have to be happy as if by law. lame people unhappy, normal people happy. In which world do you live? On the other hand, you do not seem to be readin what we write. For each person his or her trials. It is not a right to be happy it is a challenge. And the degree of the challenge will be matched by the degree of happinnes attained. But it is ridiculous to think that anybody at all without challenges "will be happy". So you are condemning all "defective" people to unhappinness? And condemning all normal people to happinnes without a right to fail and by unhappy. There are many ways in this world to unhappiness defectivness is just one. People commit suicide and they may be what you call happy.

You have come in contact with something that has shocked you, but calm down. The person who causes that shock is she as shocked as you are? My experience is the the people who suffer something do get the character to endure that something. Some more some less. As I say, suicide is something that is commited by all people, is not the privilege of lame people, so that shwos something, or not?

It is not abnormal people who are your trouble, it is you who are not able to cope with it, and I guess you are right, you are asking in this forum so that in this exchange you get help to cope with it.

I feel compassion for you, because I can see you are really suffering, but calm down, you will get used to it if you continue seeing that person. Also, take care of yourself. Getting sick because somebody is sick is of no use neither to the first sick nor to the second. I know of somebody who doing solidarity work got a deep depression. And that is a real illness, a terrible illness. Take care of yourself, I am serious. If you cannot put up with it, step aside, otherwise you will cause yourself to be sick. You will have to strengthen yourself and seek professional help so that if you are going to be around defective people, you do not get psychologically destroyed in the process. You really worry me. Please, do not get sucked in destructive feelings and thoughts. Seek help or step aside till when you are mature a formed person capable of handling that kind of thing.

I do not know how old are you. My guess is young and I guess also idealistic. That is very good, both things are good. But administer yourself, do not get broke at the beginning of the race.

I am worried about you and pray that you do not give in to destructive and so painful thoughts.

Zulf

This post may seem a bit disorganized, but hey... no problem.

What I have noticed is while it is easy to say we should not discriminate for being disabled it is also the true fact that it is extremely difficult to bring this into practice.

My next question goes to Huruf and Zulf. If you have choice of getting married to one of 5 person. 4 of them are normal with looks, education, etc.. and 1 of them is Without a leg. Will you really marry a lady without leg? Forget getting married. will you even consider her potential to get married? (I guess most of the people will think about how we will have child, how it will effect our children lives etc..) Think about it a while and imagine yourself getting married to a severely disabled girl before typing to answer this please. Even if you will say yes, I will say you will remain one of those kind person in million and trust me there are much more disabled person in this world then people like you guys.

I think we are dealing with two or three different topics at hand... i) discrimination from fellow human beings that opt to "select" other than the disabled person.... and ii) why in the first place disabled people are disabled and hence suffering, and iii) what suffering is and is not in the first place.

Regarding discrimination... we all do it all the time. You discriminate even between people who are not considered disabled. Discrimination/Selection/Choice happens all the time. If people are discriminated against (in terms of personal relationships) on the basis of physical disability, then people are also discriminated against on the basis of other qualifiers such as perceived beauty and attractiveness, education, skin color, ethnicity, religion, family background, language etc etc etc. So, it is not that physical disability is on one side and all others are on another side.

Regarding myself, what I would have done... I cannot possibly say... I haven't been in that exact seat... but I can tell you for sure that I need the person in my life to have a vibration that suits mine.... and vibration doesn't comes from limbs.

@Zulf, may be the way I said suffering is wrong, but my question is why they have to face different circumstances which seems to be logically much more difficult while living in the same world as others? Are those people really happy about how they are or have they compromised themselves as they have no other choice? If so, why are they forced to compromise?

Well, physical disaility is not at all the only potentially difficult situation that we may find ourselves in. Imagine the difficulties of having mental challenges, and I'm not talking about very low IQ or such things, but mental issues in "normal" people that may hamper us without it showing on the outside. Mental issues can really affect your level of happiness and thus be a source of suffereing. And bytheway... misery come from INSIDE, not outside. We react on the inside to the outside. That's why people can find the same situation totally different. Peace and agony depends on our inner world, no matter how hard this is to grasp in an otherwise extremely material and shallow oriented world. You can have "everything" and still be miserable. You can be one-legged, and find a wonderful spouse, and still be miserable. There is always something to be miserable about... and in the end it doesn't depend on all those soemthings.

There is a "secret" to life which is that our life appears just as good or bad as we react to it. This is true even though it may be very difficult to purify one's approach to life. Physical disability will never FORCE anyone to suffer. We suffer because the way we react mentally and emotionally to whatever situation we have at hand. Those who see themselves as victims and out of control in life, they are the one's who typically fall prey to depression etc. I know this is a very complex and vast subject area, and things are not black and white, but it is very important not to adopt the victim role regardless of one's situation. I'm myself going through a few different things that limit me in life alot, and that nobody would like to have themselves. My point is again, that there are so many difficult problems that people face... not just one or two, aand the problem is not the problem.... the problem is in our own mind. Most people won't agree to this though. They'd rather blame someone, or life, or God, and assume the victim role, and thereby locking themselves in misery.

My request again, please do not get offended with any of my lines, it is not intentional. Myself I am not disabled but recently I have come into contact with a person where I can see this closer. I used to think the same way you guys are explaining but have completely seen a different view since then..

Of course not, your questions are very valid and common. It's good to discuss these things. I also understand that you have seen some difficult situation very close, and that is of course not easy.

I also realize that my words may be interprited as harsh, shallow or void of understanding, but they are not intended like that.

I have learnt that we should not let our emotions decide what reality is. Our emotion will not determine the fact of reality, whether God exists or not, or whether life is unfair or not. Emotions rather have a tendency to cloud our minds. Just because we find ourself in difficult situations, and we feel depressed and emotional pain, this doesn't mean anything about Truth and Reality. We tend to jump to emotional conclusions, and that is a dead-end. I'm talking from my personal experience. Working on one's mind, emotions and outlook on life etc is not easy at all, and it can at times be very depressing.... but it doesn't make God or life unfair or in vain. It is in 100% of the cases our understanding and insight which is lacking.... not reality.

Peace!

oneandonly

Salaam Huruf,

I would have liked to be involve in conversation with you to clear more of my doubts but I feel your replies are too harsh. For me and also your respond to Tigress. Honestly, you are asking me to stay away from these conditions not to get depressed but to read your replies are already depressing lol. brickwall Apologies but I am not that strong yet I guess. Respond with a little bit of politeness would have been cherry in the cake but now it seems to be Chilly on the cake.

Another thing I would like to make clear is, I am not trying to blame or question God by this post. I am a god fearing person and have come to this path after surviving through diverse religious background. I was just trying to get view of different peoples on this site who most of them I think have done a lot of research and posses far more knowledge than me. If bringing that topic has somehow make you feel offended, I am really sorry about it.

May God keep us in the right path always.

Peace

oneandonly

Salam Zulf,

Thank you for your detailed reply. I think you have answered most of my concerns in a most convincing way then anybody has done so far. that is why people like you in this forum are so valuable for person like me who can come and lay down their doubts/ concerns. peace

If you do not know, I came from a Hindu background, later converted to Sunni Islam and now following Quranic teachings (without Hadith but with other scripture teachings). I am in learning phase and hopefully this site will lead me to the truth. pr